The political pimping of the incoming Emanuel mayoral administration has begun. Farewell Superintendent Jody Weis. You have made our city safer in so many ways like getting rid of dirty cops and significantly reducing violent crimes in ways no other superintendent in history has done. Chicago will miss you. Apparently city leaders aren’t smart enough to realize it yet.
It’s our misfortune that Mayor Rahmbo thinks cow-towing to the police union is more important than the service and protection of the citizens of our fair city. Personally I’m glad you went toe to toe with union president Mark Donahue. Lower morale? Bull. I’m glad you pissed off cops and made everyone do their jobs better. I’m impressed that you challenged Donahue’s obligatory protection of officers no matter how shady they were. He pisses me off every time I see him on the news spewing drivel.Anyway, I think we’re in for a long road ahead. Mayor Emanuel will be hard pressed to find someone to match your record. I don’t think it’s possible to find such a person from the rank and file. But what the hell do I know. I’m just a dumb citizen.
Continued success in your career pursuits. Any organization smart enough to pick you is getting an outstanding leader. Thanks again and continued success sir. I salute you.
I can’t believe this movie didn’t get more attention when it first came out in 1999. Talk about under rated. The story was well written and the animation is great. It should have been a hit. I’m referring to the The Iron Giant and I watched it for the first time recently myself.
It’s a streaming option on Netflix in case you were curious to check it out and I recommend that you do.I’m picking one of the still shots in the movie for one of my next homework projects. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
As I began to collect my thoughts on what I would write for this first No Wedding, No Womb campaign to address the rampant rate of out of wedlock births in the African American community it occurred to me that the situation has morphed into a new dimension of Black-On-Black crime. No more lynch mobs performing murder and mayhem on us for public entertainment. No, we’re way past the culture of the Roman Coliseum in America. In contemporary society we are breeding our own guaranteed generational curse (it actually isn’t that when you’re intentionally doing it to yourself) simply by living our lives out of order. The culture of “doing what I wanna do” has wrecked the Black community in America and we are darn near the point of no return in a collective sense.
Our lack of collective discipline has spiraled out of control and the consequences – a word no one wants to deal with – have devastated us. Everybody wants their right to live how they want to live but they don’t want the consequences. Talk about collective immaturity. When did the teaching of standard morals go out of vogue?
Think about it. How is it that in less than 50 years the Black community has gone from following and believing in the traditional model of a married father and mother as the core of a family to today’s utter failure of made-up and redefined family structuring? How has it become so normal that people regard with disdain the mere suggestion that they should choose marriage over shacking? Used to be that shacking was equated to shame. And now, waiting before mating and home making is the crazy idea?
Whenever and however it happened we totally bought into the thing that destroys us. We are so easily attracted to the things of no lasting value that endanger our children and which will guarantee our doom. An even greater shame is we have no concern for the historic perspective on what “better” was in the past for our people. Perhaps Jim Crow’s impact on our psyche was more thorough than we thought. Something has convinced a critical mass of us that nothing from previous generations was good for us. We’ve thrown the baby, the bath water and the whole damn tub out the door.
But how do we turn it around? It definitely isn’t by government intervention. Lord knows, it’s the system that enabled the current African American social catastrophe. How so? By directly encouraging the breakdown of two parent households that had begun to elevate the Black family to a point of stability into single female led homes as justification for welfare benefits.
Those of you old enough to remember the first days of public housing recall that it was a harbinger of hope and in many cases a tool for upward mobility towards independence for households. The projects were a temporary place to move from, not to live in generationally. I’ve been told that they were filled with stable, intact families, merely suffering the socio-economic shortcomings of unemployment or underemployment and maybe some educational shortfalls that were holding them back. But typically, the Black mom and dad were there.
Well thanks to welfare agents “a man should be working, not be given a hand out” thinking the government helped do in the poor masses. How so you ask? The reaction of many people over time was to work the system by having that unemployed father to move out for a while so that his family could be fed. The absence of more and more fathers from homes and from the neighborhood became such a habit that in due time it led to the notion that men weren’t needed to raise the children. In modern times the mentality has stuck like catastrophic social glue.
Unfortunately that trend has spread way beyond public housing. Add to that mix a failing educational system and generations of parents who don’t send their children to school ready to respect authority and ready to learn and we have a self perpetuating system of social failure that has manifest itself – quite logically – into higher rates of crime and out of wedlock births. Natural consequences. There’s that word we hate again.
What has it done for Black children? Nothing good. Who can change it? Not the government. Although federal social policy is a major part of the problem, I have no faith in it as solution. Who can change it? Not somebody, but us. Somebody is you and me, and there’s a heck of a lot we can do. What can we do? Quite simply, change the way we live and put ourselves in a position to give our children the families they deserve. Families that can protect them, properly rear them and prepare them for the world. It’s about proper lifestyles and those are created by proper habits.
Radical problems call for radical solutions though. I have a few thoughts on the matter. Try a few of these tough love turn around suggestions.
· For you Black dads who have been loose cannon sperm donors up to this point in your lives, start being actual fathers. Your young and impressionable children are craving your attention. Take advantage of if while they still have the natural love in their hearts for you. There is a point when they will stop thinking of you and maybe even start hating you.
· There are certain life lessons only a father can teach. Your daughters need to learn what a good man is (from your example) in order to distinguish between worthy men and creeps. Your sons need to learn how to be men (something they can only learn from other men, not women) so step up. Yes sir. Both of those things are YOUR job daddy.
· Bitter moms, who weren’t wise enough to know you slept with the wrong guy, get over yourselves. So what that you gave it up to someone who wasn’t committed to you. Fine. But let him be the father if he is one of those who are committed to THAT role. If he’s ready to establish his rightful relationship with his offspring then put your selfish, hurt feelings to the side and allow your children to have what they deserve – two parents. It ain’t about you anymore so get over it.
· Current parents of young kids, teens and young adults, we have to be more blunt, direct, and consistent about the expectations we have of our children’s moral behavior. In fact allow me to add a foreign word to your family vocabulary…ABSTINENCE. Tell your sons if they are not going to the bathroom to use the toilet or to wash their bodies then they need to keep their penises in their pants (No Wedding, No Womb). Encourage your daughters not to fall for the foolish emotions of their young hearts and the persuasive tongue of that young man who hasn’t put a ring on her finger first. Unless she’s going to the bathroom to use the toilet or wash her body she needs to keep her legs closed and her panties pulled up (No Wedding, No Womb).
· Current unwed mothers and fathers let the last baby be your last baby until you get married. Be a better example going forward than you were in the past. Same rules for you as the young kids. Keep your penis in your pants or keep your panties pulled up (No Wedding, No Womb).
· Ladies hear this from a man and hear it clearly. You are in total control. A man won’t do anything you don’t allow and we will try everything in the book to convince you to allow a lot of stupid. Simply check it and don’t allow it (No Wedding, No Womb).
(By the way, if the above pointers on abstinence make you cringe or seem unrealistic then consider the fact that it’s the only guaranteed form of birth control and sexual disease avoidance in human history. Just throwing that out there for your consideration.)
Finally history shows us that discombobulated families are the first sign of destruction for any civilization. Although we are well on our way our fate isn’t necessarily sealed. No situation in life is ever totally hopeless. Not even socially entrenched problems like a rampant out-of-wedlock birth rate. Well it’s our time and a grass roots style cultural change is how we go about changing it. Everything is about behavioral change, the way we live. So do that. Change the way you live. Ladies, start telling the guys “No Wedding, No Womb” and we’ll be well on our way to turning this thing around.
Thanks to the 2010 African Festival of the Arts in Chicago I have developed a late appreciation for an American original music style, the blues. The Blues Pavilion turned out to be a cast of local legends. It’s possible that you may have seen a comparable combination of stellar talent performing on stage at one show before but probably not in the role of lecturers and historians so you really missed out if you weren’t there.
Yours truly used social media to connect with an international blues star online and to meet her in person at the festival. Deitra Farr has lived in Europe for the last few years – she has performed all over the continent – and fortunately for American music fans she moved back to sweet home Chicago just in time to be one of the featured panelists at the blues pavilion. Before returning she completed a show only a few weeks ago at the Silda Jazz Festival in Haugesund, Norway. Among other things she shared with me how the lack of appreciation for blues in America stands in stark contrast to its massive popularity in Europe. As you see though, they can still do the globe trotting tour thing as well as the other more popular music genres.
She was joined by Herb Walker and Katherine Davis. Chicago Beau (Lincoln T. Beauchamp, Jr.) was the moderator. I learned a lot about the chronology of American music. I figured that most of the rock, soul and funk groups I grew up on likely listened to jazz when they were youngsters but I learned that jazz itself was birthed by the blues and the others came in succession over time.
Katherine Davis is serious about perpetuating the craft for the next generation. She’s involved with Blues In the Schools, which helps keep the blues alive in local school music curriculum. She shared great comments on the ongoing negative perception of the blues in here in the States, much of it due to educational powers that be.
Herb Walker made extensive comments about the need for blues musicians to share notes and write books to record their historic contributions. No one else seems to be doing so, at least not to the degree that awareness in America has been enhanced in a significant way. I agree with him on that note. No one can record your history better than the participants.
As it turns out Chicago Beau is on the job. He had a few copies of Blues Speak an anthology of his past writings of things blues and jazz related. Deitra Farr has a section in it and she autographed it for the young guy who had a personal copy.
I’ll share some of my unedited clips of comments from the panel here. Very insightful and if you’re like me you’ll learn a lot. In order, left to right are Deitra Farr, Herb Walker, Katherine Davis, and Chicago Beau.
I just read a great book called I’m On Facebook, Now What??? with a lot of good information you can apply immediately. It covers all points from profile optimization to leveraging the Facebook platform for business. Here are a few points that stood out to me.
The book explains that the demographic for Facebook is mostly GenY. This is where the under 35 crowd hangs out.
It also talks about organizing friends into Friends Lists on your own profile as well as joining groups of interest to you. If you have a subgroup of friends that you want to consistently send particular types of info to then you can choose the list name without needing to select a bunch of individuals each time.
One of the nice features are advertising apps written by creative programmers. You can also use Facebook’s add creation button. Business apps are populating Facebook’s space daily. It’s worth your while to spend time investigating some of them to aid business generation.
I learned a completely new term, Social Network Optimization. Including specific search terms (a Search Engine Optimization technique) in the application you create can push it higher on search engine results pages when Facebook users are looking for something new to add to their profiles.
Great chapter on privacy including pros and cons of various settings. I’ll leave it to you to read but suffice it to say you can restrict your friends access to specific pieces of information on your profile, your feeds etc. Everyone doesn’t have to know everything. You can also restrict their ability to comment. These features are particularly helpful if you have colorful friends you want to keep up with but don’t necessarily want to have all your other FB friends scratching their heads about who you hang out with online (smile).
Great book. Check it out from your library or buy it soon.
A friend who made mention on Facebook of her fundraiser for the cheer leading team got me to thinking about how social media – specifically Facebook, which she is familiar with – could be used to make fund raising more effective for the team. If you were a coach or close supporter of a cheerleading or similar school club here’s how I’d recommend you approach it.
Create a Facebook Page for your team with the “Brand, product, or organization:” set up. Pick the “Non-Profit” option from the drop down list. Non profits raise funds all the time so this should easily accelerate your team’s fund raising efforts. Invite your student’s parents, fans and community supporters to “Like” the page. Even though it’s generally assumed that kids participating in school system sponsored activities will be videoed and photographed you may still want to check with your school system and parents to obtain permission to use the kids’ images for photos and videos on the FB Page. You know your school system so I leave that part to your sense of judgment.
You will also need to determine how your local school system wants you to disposition any funds you collect. Will you need to turn the money in to a book keeper, accountant or CFO in your school or at the school board? If this is the case then you will need to work closely with that financial person to make sure online transactions are routed properly through your site and properly accounted for by your board of education. That’s the last step though so more on that later.
There are three components of your FB Page plan that will make your efforts effective. These are the pieces of your virtual club marketing/public relations system that you will need to explain clearly to the financial person.
First and simplest is to activate the “Events” tab on the Page. This is where you can add the games where the team will be cheering, the camps and competitions they’ll be attending and any public appearances they make. This tab and the “Wall” are fundamental to the basic public relations for the group.
Next you’ll want to create an Eventbrite account. Eventbrite is an online ticketing website that allows you to sell tickets to your events. When you create the event and people buy from your link they can print tickets and their money is deposited into your account. It’s simple online purchasing with a credit or debit card like people do every day only now it benefits your cheering squad.
Finally, should you decide to get fancy, consider adding a PayPal donation button to the site. It should go perfectly on a custom designed landing page for your Fan Page. People love helping kids and a well designed graphic with the school name and school system with mascots, logos, maybe a good action photo or two, would surely encourage people to give in general during the times when you’re not selling anything in particular.
As far as accounting for online fund raising this is where the financial people do their part. The accountant/book keeper etc. will enter the school or school system’s bank account info into the PayPal and Eventbrite accounts so that purchases and donations are routed properly. That’s as easy as sitting down next to them in their office logging into the team’s Eventbrite and PayPal sites and turning your head while they enter the confidential bank account and routing information. At that point your Facebook Page is fully functional as a fund raising tool and it’s a matter of drawing people to click the “Like” button to use it.
Most people love online ticket buying so it shouldn’t be too difficult to convince your target audience to use the Page to buy a car wash or competition or bake sale or whatever type of ticket once you make them aware of it as a purchasing option. The only difficulty I can anticipate is convincing your local educational powers-that-be to jump into the social media sphere, especially if they are skeptical of the online world. Know the important contact people, schmooze and prepare well in order to broach this subject to any hesitant parties in order to launch your plan successfully.
If you need an example take a look at this cheerleading team’s Page and see how it could be improved with the income generating tweaks mentioned here. If you have a cheerleading team or any other school organization whose supporters you are trying to groom into financial supporters then consider using these basic social media tools that more people are using every day.
This morning when I sat down to begin my workday, I had a “to-do” to check a link that I wanted to use in one of my posts for my business blog. When I typed in the domain name, I discovered that the page had been re-directed to a totally brand new site that was completely unrelated to its original intentions. This was a blog that I had developed specifically for this client. I creatively came up with the catchy domain name, I determined the posting schedule, wrote the posts to my specifications, edited and invited guest bloggers to post. I grew the blogs traffic via social networking and being “out there” promoting this blog and the wonders of it. So essentially, the re-directed page had nothing to do with what it was originally set-up for. Let me give you a bit of background explanation.
Pro Blogging
I have been professionally blogging (meaning I get paid for it) for over four years now. I’ve been writing for over 12 years. About four years ago, an online network hired me to blog about working from home, executive women professionals, etc. I was simply delighted to write because that’s what I love. I poured my heart and creative intelligence into the blog and it grew in traffic and readership and people were engaging and participating on the site a lot. It was jumping! Well, as it goes in the world of business, money changed hands and so did ownership of that online network. That meant the writers had the option of 1.) staying on board for significantly less pay or 2.) opting to leave with the keyboard they brought with them. I toiled over this for some time because I LOVED my blog, but I couldn’t support myself off the peanuts they were offering. It just wasn’t right but it was what it was. I opted out.
From what I understand, a few other writers from that time took over the helm and tried to grow the blog. And, from what I understand, the site changed owners a few more times. It was very unfortunate, but what impacted me most was that my creative works were gone. Gone. Since I was under contract, all of the pieces that I had written for the company were owned by them, therefore they could do with it as they pleased. They deleted them all. Everything that I had written from my heart and head knowledge in two years was gone. And even if I had kept the posts in a word processing file, I still could not use them – - remember, I signed a contract.
The Real First
My point here is to encourage those of you who are in business to put yourself FIRST! I don’t mean neglect your clients, but if you’re going to be successful and become a brand name, your work deserves your full heart and creative juices. As for clients, ALWAYS deliver 110% to them, no matter what. Always give them the ultimate best and be the person they think of when they have work or need products. But as for your heart’s desire, your “baby” if you will, give your deep, undivided attention to that. The rewards far outweigh anything you can imagine. Although the reaping of those rewards may be slower, they will come nonetheless.
Now, I still write for clients – many clients as a matter of fact. I give them a thousand percent and I get repeat business. But as for my heart’s goals, I’ve turned my full attention to giving my blogs what they deserve: me. My essence, my core. All of those things are too precious to give away, and they’re even harder to retrieve once they’re lost. If you’re going to be in business and be successful, prioritize what you’re aiming for and focus on that. Entrepreneur’s have dreams of having their own brand, products, image, books, etc, but they can never achieve those things if they don’t focus on making them happen.
Class # 3 was about my favorite subject, social media. The presentation was given by Chris Brogan of New Marketing Labs. The homework assignment was to write up a step-by-step plan for how I could develop a community around my company on a social networking site of my choice. That assignment is in the works and the choice is a Facebook fan page.
Chris gave ten key points in developing a community. Among them are to listen to and acknowledge community members. Respond to comments and give content that is useful to them. Also it’s not about the platform (FB, twitter etc.) but the people. When the next big thing comes along your community will follow you to that platform as well. Serve them well in the mean time to insure that. Also celebrate your community members. Celebrate your community’s personal and professional successes.
The other tips were great too. Play the video and take in good information provided by Chris and be more effective in growing your online community.
I’m sure I’ve written on this subject before but a real world and Facebook friend’s comment on her wall today has me thinking about the state of American manliness once again. I fear the current condition is directly related to slovenly attitudes about dress styles etc. but I’ve already worn that subject out (saggers with matching underwear that they consider a style) and I’ll keep this discussion elevated to plane of higher principle.
My curiosity on the issue led me to search for what other bloggers have written on the matter and I found a couple of pretty good ones. Darryl James has some really good thoughts in this March 2nd post on the Black Men In America blog covering the original definition of chivalry in Middle Ages Europe to modern day perceptions that are varied within American culture.
And this video from YourTango, Smart Talk About Love, five guys take a few minutes to talk about the impact of boys lack of exposure to chivalrous training and girls lack of exposure to chivalrous behavior as the culprits. They figure those are some of the reasons that, not only is chivalry being practiced less by young men, but is also why many women don’t expect it and sometimes react to it in surprised or suspicious fashion.
These posts are representative of how the concept has evolved over time due to changing societal norms. Some of the bad habits have become so entrenched that they are affecting relationships in an unnecessarily negative way. Men and women are confused on both ends because the practice is exhibited too infrequently as a normal and expected behavior. Well if you haven’t figured it out yet I think a serious change is due. One that will not only improve the state of gender relationships but common decency and neighborliness as well.
So fellas I charge you with a series of tasks for the second half of 2010. Starting today, offer a lady your seat where ever you are when none are available. Bus, train, church, office, doesn’t matter. Depending on the part of the country where you live – specifically anywhere outside the southeast – really shock people and start using mam and sir in your responses to people more senior in age than you. Nothing will set you apart from the average guy more quickly. Open doors for the ladies and girls. Here’s another big one. Watch your mouth around women and girls. Set a better example of manliness by not cursing if front of them in your normal conversation. Teach your sons all of these things by intention and by habit.
Don’t worry about the occasional negative reaction. If a particular lady can’t appreciate the gesture just continue in the positive.
Ladies, I’m not going to leave you out. A few changes for your task list include accepting chivalrous behavior and teaching your daughters to accept it as well. Find ways to expose your sons to men who are good examples, be they friends, neighbors, family or organizational leaders of any number of youth programs. You as women can talk about these principles but only we men can demonstrate and groom the behavior. And watch your tongues in public as well. Many of you don’t sound any different than guys. It only encourages the attraction of that kind of guy. Just sayin’.
I’m convinced that lax cultural mores aren’t beyond repair. Any situation can be turned around but like most significant things, they start on a small scale with individuals like us. So let’s start to make that change today, jump start a collective surge and watch the impact it makes in due time.
